Picture ID for common law sponsorship

[Alittke]

Hi,
I will be sponsoring my American girlfriend for permanent residency as we plan to move to Toronto in early 2020 from our current home in California. I own the home and am the only name on the title and mortgage. Once my girlfriend moved in, she changed her address to my address. She is the only name on the cable and electric bill and I am the only name on the water and garbage bill but the address on all the bills is the same, our current address. We have had a joint bank account for over a year and a joint CD. She has a statement/bill from the moving company showing when she moved in. Assuming we accumulate 12 successive months of these water, trash, cable and electric bills, will this be good enough to proof common law relationship? Anything else we should be compiling/collecting? One worry I have is, both our current CA driver's liscence (picture ID) have old addresses since in California one renews a drivers liscence only every 5 years. Should we update our drivers liscence ASAP to have our current address? Note that our car registration and auto insurance DOES have our current address. All our other photo ID's (passport, Green card) do NOT list home address. So basically, NO photo ID's with our CURRENT address. Is this going to be an issue when we apply? Many thanks, Adam

 

[canuck78]

Hi,
I will be sponsoring my American girlfriend for permanent residency as we plan to move to Toronto in early 2020 from our current home in California. I own the home and am the only name on the title and mortgage. Once my girlfriend moved in, she changed her address to my address. She is the only name on the cable and electric bill and I am the only name on the water and garbage bill but the address on all the bills is the same, our current address. We have had a joint bank account for over a year and a joint CD. She has a statement/bill from the moving company showing when she moved in. Assuming we accumulate 12 successive months of these water, trash, cable and electric bills, will this be good enough to proof common law relationship? Anything else we should be compiling/collecting? One worry I have is, both our current CA driver's liscence (picture ID) have old addresses since in California one renews a drivers liscence only every 5 years. Should we update our drivers liscence ASAP to have our current address? Note that our car registration and auto insurance DOES have our current address. All our other photo ID's (passport, Green card) do NOT list home address. So basically, NO photo ID's with our CURRENT address. Is this going to be an issue when we apply? Many thanks, Adam

You seem to have lots of proof of cohabitation. Make sure you have something with the dates on it as well to confirm when you started living together. You can sponsor your common law once you hit the 1 year mark from the US as long as you can show intent to move back to Canada. If your gf is American and the application is straightforward it may be processed in closer to 6 months although no guarantees.